As a happiness coach, one of the most common questions I get is, “Are you happy?” This is why today I want to answer this question in writing.
This question matters, as it is known that happiness is a subjective experience, meaning that we can’t just look at someone and know for a fact that they are happy. Words alone are not sufficient to prove that we are happy. Even having a book and a blog about the topic of happiness doesn’t 100% prove that I am happy, just as we can be financially poor but easily write a book about being rich.
Luckily, science offers a few great ways to quantify the subjective experience of happiness, which is why today I want to offer definitive proof that when I say “I’m happy,” I am actually stating a scientifically proven truth, which on a side note also proves that I’m one of the happiest people alive.
Naturally, I hope that this article will also teach you, the reader, a new way to look at happiness and eventually join the ranks of the happiest people on the planet.
However, before we can do this, we first need to agree on “what is happiness?”, an answer I discuss in detail in a different blog post. After all, if we can’t agree on the definition of happiness, we won’t be able to agree on how to measure happiness.
To summarize this other article, happiness is a positive emotion connected to our sense of well-being. In other words, we want to maximize positive emotions and minimize negative ones. So when I say that I’m one of the happiest people alive, I mean to say that I experience happiness more often than the vast majority of people, and on average, I have stronger positive emotions too.
Secondly, I want to talk about my ayahuasca experience. For those of you who don’t know ayahuasca, it is a sacred psychoactive beverage typically consumed in spiritual ceremonies. It is associated with physical, spiritual, and psychological healing, being held in the highest regard by many healers and spiritual practitioners.
Specifically, when you consume ayahuasca, you lose the notion of time, identity, and the real physical world, which means that a person is working exclusively with their subconscious mind, not having access to conscious thought.
I did it three times and while being in the state I had exclusively very positive experiences. To give you perspective, most people state that they have dealt with some sort of negative trauma, emotion, or feeling.
It is very rare, but not completely uncommon, to have a purely positive experience during an ayahuasca experience. However, it is even less likely to do it three times and always have an exclusively positive experience. After all, during this ceremony, we are dealing with the subconscious mind and therefore we really need to be pure in our thoughts in order to have a purely positive experience.
As such, even under a very strong psychedelic drug, I felt happy constantly and all the time. This is my first proof that I am very happy.
My second proof happened in a hospital after I broke my leg in an accident where I fell from the scooter. The scooter landed on my leg and broke my bone. I was hospitalized and soon after operated on.
During the operation, the trip to the hospital, and after the operation, I never stopped being positive and having upbeat conversations with different people, including the doctors and surgeons that operated on me. In fact, the doctors who operated on me were surprised by my positive reactions, despite being in a world of pain.
This concept is known in Buddhism as feeling pain without suffering. In other words, if I were to pinch your hand, you would feel pain, but it wouldn’t necessarily mean that you would be suffering because the intensity of the pain would be so low. However, you can learn to do the same on a very high level, so even in the most dire situations, you still feel positive. Naturally, it is very hard to do, but it is definitely possible.
Furthermore, two years after the operation, I came back to my doctor who was astonished to see me walking, running, doing deadlifts in the gym, roller skating, and acting as if I didn’t have this accident. He said that my recovery was one-in-a-million, the best possible case scenario I could wish for, as he originally told me that it was likely that I would walk with a walking stick and experience knee-related pain for the rest of my life. I told him that I always knew that I would make a full recovery, and I had no doubt in my mind that despite this really hard physical trauma, I would recover fully.
Actually, I did not go back to one hundred percent as I still can’t bend my knee completely, but it is still bending into a comfortable angle. Still, the fact remains that my positive thinking contributed to my one-in-a-million recovery as it is well known in the medical literature that your mental state guides your recovery. So, I had the best possible mental state and therefore had the best possible recovery even in this bad situation.
Finally, you too can have this high-level happiness and become one of the happiest people alive. To do so, the only thing you need to do is follow Optimal Happiness advice on how to become happy.
To learn more about Optimal Happiness, contact us. You can send us an email or book a 30-minute free call. Remember, happiness today and forever is possible for virtually anybody. In the end, happiness is a choice, so say “yes” to happiness and see your life change in amazing new ways.
